After a while she wiped her face with her fingers. “Is it time?” she asked. “Is it two?”
Lumin seemed not to hear. “What else?”
“I don’t know.” She sniffed to clear her nose. “Paul—” Medical degrees and other official papers hung on either side of Freud’s picture. Lumin’s first name was Arnold. That little bit of information made her not want to go on. But he was waiting. “I’m not really in love with this old friend,” she told him. “He’s an old friend, we’ve known him since graduate school. And he’s — he’s very nice, he’s carefree, he’s full of sympathy—”
“Isn’t Paul?”
“Oh yes,” she said, in what came out like a whine. “Oh so sympathetic. Dr. Lumin, I don’t know what I want. I don’t love Gabe. I really can’t stand him if you want to know the truth. He’s not for me, he’s not Paul — he never could be. Now he’s living with some woman and her two kids. Two of the most charming little children you ever saw, and those two are living together, right in front of them. She’s so vulgar, I don’t know what’s gotten into him. We had dinner there — nobody said anything, and there was Gabe with that bitch.”
“Why is she such a bitch?”
“Oh”—Libby wilted—“she’s not that either. Do you want to know the bitch? Me. I was. But I knew it would be awful even before we got there. So, God, that didn’t make it any easier.”
He did not even have to bother; the next question she asked herself. “I don’t know why. I just thought, why shouldn’t we? We never go out to dinner, we hardly have been able to go out anywhere — and that’s because of me too, and my health. Why shouldn’t we? Do you see? And besides, I wanted to,” she said. “It’s as simple as that. I mean isn’t that still simple — to want to? But then I went ahead and behaved worse than anybody, I know I did. Oh, Gabe was all right — even she was all right, in a way. I understand all that. She’s not a bitch probably. She’s probably just a sexpot, good in bed or something, and why shouldn’t Gabe live with her anyway? He’s single, he can do whatever he wants to do. I’m the one who started the argument. All I do lately is argue with people. And cry. I mean that keeps me pretty busy, you can imagine.”
Lumin remained Lumin; he didn’t smile. In fact he frowned. “What do you argue about? Who are you arguing with?”
She raised two hands to the ceiling. “Everybody,” she said. “Everything.”
“Not Paul?”
“Not Paul — that’s right, not Paul. For Paul,” she announced. “Everybody’s just frustrating the hell out of him, and it makes me so angry. It makes me so furious! That John Spigliano! Gabe … Oh I haven’t even begun to tell you what’s happened.”
“Well, go on.”
“What?” she said helplessly. “Where?”
“Paul. Why is this Paul so frustrated?”
She leaned forward, and her two fists came hammering down on his desk. “If he wasn’t, Doctor, oh if they would just leave him alone!” She fell back, breathless. “Isn’t it two?”
At last he gave her a smile. “Almost.”
“It must be. I’m so tired. I have such lousy resistance …”
“It’s a very tiring thing, this kind of talking,” Lumin said. “Everybody gets tired.”
“Doctor,” she said, “can I ask you a question?”
“What?”
“What’s the matter with me?”
“What do you think’s the matter?”
“Please, Dr. Lumin, please don’t pull that stuff. Really, that’ll drive me nuts.”
He shook a finger at her. “C’mon, Libby, don’t threaten me.” The finger dropped, and she thought she saw through his smile. “It’s not my habit to drive people nuts.”
She backed away. “I’m nuts already anyway.”
For an answer he clasped and unclasped his hands.
“Well, I am,” she said. “I’m cracked as the day is long.”
He groaned. “What are you talking about? Huh? I’m not saying you should make light of these problems. These are real problems. Absolutely. Certainly. You’ve got every reason to be upset and want to talk to somebody. But”—he made a sour face—“what’s this cracked business? How far does it get us? It doesn’t tell us a hell of a lot, would you agree?”
She had, of course, heard of transference, and she wondered if it could be beginning so soon. She was beaming at him; her first friend in Chicago.
“So …” he said peacefully.
“Really I haven’t begun to tell you things.”
“Sure, sure.”
“When should I come again? I mean,” she said more softly, with less bravado, “should I come again?”
“If you want to, of course.” He looked at the appointment book on his desk. “How’s the day after tomorrow? Same time.”
“That’s fine. I think that would be perfect. Except—” Her heart, which had stopped its pounding earlier, started up again, like a band leaving the field. “How much will it be then?”
“Same as today—”
“I only brought,” she rushed to explain, “ten dollars.”
“We’ll send a bill then. Don’t worry about that.”
“It’s more than ten, for today?”
“The usual fee is twenty-five dollars.”
“An hour?”
“An hour.”
She had never in her life passed out, and that she didn’t this time probably indicated that she never would. She lost her breath, voice, vision, all sense of feeling, but she managed to stay upright in her chair. “I — don’t send a bill to the house.”
“I’d rather you wouldn’t,” Lumin began, a kind of gaseous expression crossing his face, “worry about the money. We can talk about that too.”
Libby had stood up; now she sat down. “I think I have to talk about it.”
“All right. We’ll talk.”
“It’s after two, I think.”
“That’s all right.”
But what she meant was, would he charge for overtime? Twenty-five dollars an hour — that must be nearly fifty cents a minute. “I can’t pay twenty-five dollars.” She tried to cry, but couldn’t. She felt very dry, very tired.
“Perhaps we can work it out at twenty.”
“I can’t pay twenty. I can’t pay fifteen. I can’t pay anything.”
“Of course,” said Lumin firmly, “you didn’t expect it would be for nothing.”